


stardust

by weasleysking



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt Peter Parker, Hurt/Comfort, Irondad, Mental Health Issues, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Not Canon Compliant, Parent Tony Stark, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter Parker Whump, Peter Parker is a Mess, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Tony Stark, Psychological Trauma, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Trauma, Whump, ooooh okay this is a hefty one, spiderson, the author is projecting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-10-03 22:49:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20460794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weasleysking/pseuds/weasleysking
Summary: A war where there were no casualties was still a war.And the more time Peter Parker spent thinking about it, the more he realised that the word casualties didn’t just describe death of people, it described the death of hundreds of emotions and feelings. Childlike innocence, lack of constant vigilance, idealistic safety, the belief that something could just be over as soon as the threat was defeated. A sixteen year old could barely grasp the idea that the mental wounds of war had the potential to be harder to deal with than the physical ones, let alone process it.or; peter struggles with processing what has happened to the world after he returns from the soul stone.





	stardust

**Author's Note:**

> i'm really, really proud of this fic. i hope you guys enjoy it. Xx  
ps i'm totally projecting rn im rlly sad HAHAH

A war where there were no casualties was still a war.  
And the more time Peter Parker spent thinking about it, the more he realised that the word casualties didn’t just describe death of people, it described the death of hundreds of emotions and feelings. Childlike innocence, lack of constant vigilance, idealistic safety, the belief that something could just be over as soon as the threat was defeated. A sixteen year old could barely grasp the idea that the mental wounds of war had the potential to be harder to deal with than the physical ones, let alone process it. 

This was how Peter found himself shrouded in a strange and terrifying period after Thanos, after he and May had moved back into their apartment, but long before anyone had even suggested he could think about going back to school, if he’d like.  
His days consisted of enveloping himself in the warmth and comfort of his blankets, not often leaving. Sometimes drifting off because he was tired from lack of sleep the night before, but being shaken awake by May after a couple of hours because he could never stop the nightmares. His nights were often spent awake, unable to make sleep come, or perhaps too terrified to let it. He found himself opening his bedroom window, no matter the temperature, and hanging out it, staring down into the city as it carried on it’s nightly duties. Like no one could hear his brain, scared, screaming. 

Because how he supposed to move on after what he’d been through? How was anyone supposed to move on? He didn’t understand how everyone else in the world seemed to have jumped at the chance to go back to normal life. How kids were already back at school, how adults were finding new jobs, how everyone could talk about what had happened as if it was over. For Peter felt ten steps behind everyone else; like he was sitting on a knife’s edge that appeared invisible to the people around him. That even after Thanos’s army had been destroyed, and after he’d looked up at Tony with such childlike innocence and asked “is it over?” shakily, it had only just begun. He couldn’t wrap his head around what had happened, he couldn’t understand how the world was picking itself up and dusting itself off and saying “Well, that was fun guys, let’s not do it again.” The world was too big, and Peter had dealt with so many emotional casualties that he couldn’t even try to keep up. 

And in the wake of everything that had happened, the grief he had just learnt how to deal with (his parents, Ben, homecoming, some of the things he’d been subjected to on patrol) were only thrown into the deep, dark, swirling pool of trauma that now made up his thoughts. Peter knew he was pushing everyone away. He’d barely talked to Ned, or MJ or his aunt, because he knew no matter how many times they could say the words ‘we’re here for you’, they would never understand what he’d seen. And when Tony, or Pepper, or Steve, or Happy, or Natasha, or Rhodey, or, goddammit, anyone of the Avengers put a hand on his shoulder and told him everything would be alright, he wanted to scream. He wanted to scream and hit them and sob and say that it wouldn’t, and that they of all people should know it wouldn’t. They were the ones who were supposed to understand that a war was never just ‘over’, the ones who understood what he had seen and dealt with.  
Maybe they were trying to help. In fact, he knew they were, but how was he supposed to turn to them and say ‘I know you know that this isn’t over. I know you know I’m not okay. I know you know I don’t know how to live. So stop lying. Stop walking on eggshells around me, because you know as well as I do that I’ve lost any shred of childhood innocence I had left when I turned to dust in Tony’s arms, when I stepped out of that portal, more terrified than I’ve ever been in my whole life, and fought creatures from hell and saw people on our side of the fight fall to the ground beside me. We won, but we might as well have lost, because that’s how I feel. Help me.’ 

He couldn’t say that, he couldn’t just turn and say that because how could he choke that out without melting into a puddle of terror right before their eyes?  
And he couldn’t say that because he worried that when they told him that it was okay, when they comforted him, it wasn’t just for him. They were all going through their trauma too. Comforting him like he was still a child probably made them feel like he was, made them feel better. And Peter’s job was to help people. So why wouldn’t he try to help the people he cared about most by feigning innocence for a little longer? 

But Peter was so, so tired of helping people. He was so lost, destroyed that the world had lived five years without him, so sick of feeling like he was filthy, covered in invisible blood, dirt and scars from a battle that had finished weeks ago. So broken down, afraid to close his eyes because every time he did, images no child, no person, should ever have to see, flashed past. So confused as to what had even come upon the world so quickly, the black storm cloud that floated above the entire universe and struck it all at once- why had it come? What higher being had brought it to existence? Overcome with terror and existential thoughts he couldn’t control, Peter was so tired. He was so, so tired. 

That’s how Peter Parker found himself throwing off his blankets, pulling on a hoodie, walking right out of the apartment and catching a bus out of the city at 1:03 am one night. That’s how he found himself sitting on the bus for an hour, his forehead pressed against the glass, trying to tell his brain to shut up. That’s how he found himself instinctively getting off at the stop near Tony and Pepper’s house by the lake. That’s how he found himself walking straight past their house and out by the lake, where he lay on the grassy bank beside the water, looking up into the sky and watching the stars, hearing the water lapping at the base, and feeling the grass beneath him. He was a little cold, but his jeans, hoodie and sneakers seemed to suffice. He didn’t really mind being cold anyway. It was proof he could feel something. 

So he lay there like that, lay there staring up at the sky, which comforted him in a strange way, considering he had spent weeks on end terrified of thinking anything could be bigger than him. But it did. So he looked at it. He listened to everything around him. He felt everything beneath him. He didn’t sense any danger. For some inexplicable reason, lying there in Tony’s backyard had finally shut his brain off. He was awake, but he could allow himself to just be in the moment, be at peace.  
Though some small part of him still felt like it was dying. 

The sky was still dark, but the stars were starting to fade a little when Peter heard the back door shut softly up at the house. He didn’t move. He heard whoever it was coming down the steps and down through the yard towards him. He stayed still. 

“Hey Pete,” Tony’s voice cut through the darkness concernedly, but with undertones of bemusement. “Wanna tell me why you’ve been lying in my garden since 2:30am?”  
Peter didn’t look around. He stayed spread out on the ground, looking up.  
“Come on kid. Talk to me.”  
Peter exhaled. “What’s the time?” He asked softly, still making steady eye contact with the sky.  
“It’s 4:47. In the morning. Were we not tired tonight?” Tony sat down on the grass beside Peter. “I called May as soon as you showed up, by the way.”  
“Okay,” Peter replied.  
“So what’s the deal?” Tony asked after Peter was silent again. “Come on. You can talk to me.”  
Peter shrugged, still not looking at Tony. He refused. He refused to let him look into his eyes and see the pain. He knew he would. 

“I’m fine.”  
The words came so easily, so fluidly, they rolled off his tongue without even having to think about it. It was one of the most significant lies he’d ever told.  
“And yet,” Tony said quietly, “May told Pepper you spend every day in bed and won’t talk to her or eat properly, you’ve been ignoring my texts, Steve says he went to drop something off you and you look like you’d been hit by a truck and didn’t even get up to say hello to him, you haven’t sent me one of those stupid videos in weeks, you haven’t been hanging out with your friends and no one can actually get a proper word out of you. Care to explain?”  
Tears stung Peter’s eyes without him really observing them. He still refused to look at Tony.  
The sky. The sky was all that mattered. 

“Looks to me like you’re really not fine, kiddo.” Tony lay down next to Peter on the grass, and looked up at the sky with him, listening to the kid sniff and break his heart. “What are we looking at?”  
Tony wasn’t really expecting an answer, but he got one.  
“Cygnus.”  
“Huh?”  
“Northern cross. It’s a constellation.” Peter pointed up into the sky, waving his shaking hand at a group of stars above them.  
“Oh. You like stars?”  
“Kind of. Yeah. I do.”  
“I didn’t know that.”  
Silence again.  
“Peter, what’s wrong?” Tony asked, sitting up in a last desperate attempt a moment later. He’d just gotten this kid, his kid, back, for God’s sake, and he wanted him to be okay.  
He needed him to be okay.  
Peter was quiet again, but he must have heard the desperation in Tony’s voice, because a moment later, very slowly and cautiously, he sat up too, and for the first time in weeks, looked Tony in the eye. It was everything he could do not to break down, then and there.  
“I don’t know,” Peter whispered, his voice cracking. “I… I really don’t know.”  
“Okay,” Tony said slowly. “Do you mind if I ask you some stuff?”  
“Okay.”  
“You can just say yes or no. you don’t have to elaborate if you don’t want too.”  
“Okay.”  
Tony watched as Peter crawled over to him and lay his head on his lap. Tony stroked Peter’s hair and exhaled.  
“Alright. I’ll start easy. Are you sad?”  
“Yes.”  
“Okay. Are you scared?”  
“Yes.”  
“Is this something to do with Thanos?”  
“Yes.”  
“Has this only started since you came back from the soul stone?”  
“Yes.”  
“Do you worry a lot?”  
“Yes.”  
“Do you think about what happened on Titan, and back here on earth, with Thanos, a lot?”  
“Yes.”  
“Do you think about other stuff you’ve been through a lot?”  
“Yes.”  
“Are you always tired?”  
“Yes.”  
“Do you want to die?” 

The last question caught Peter off guard, and he paused, looking up at the sky again from Tony’s lap. Tony held his breath, waiting for an answer, his heart in his mouth. He knew what Peter was going through. All the team went through it, the trauma and mental health problems that followed, plus of course, anything else he’d been through on top of that; his uncle, his parents, homecoming.  
But they were adults, and Peter? Peter was only a kid. 

“I don’t know,” Peter said hoarsely. “Maybe.”  
Tony felt ice cold, but tried to ignore his shaking voice as he spoke. “Okay kid. Can I do something?”  
Peter pressed his head into Tony’s lap, wondering maybe if he could stare down long enough, the world around him would sink away.  
“I don’t know,” Peter repeated.  
“Is there anything you want to do right now?”  
Peter thought about this for a second.  
“I want to cry,” he whispered.  
Tony felt like he’d just been punched in the gut.  
“Okay kid,” he said back softly. “You can cry.” 

That seemed like all the kid needed. Peter buried his head deeper and began to sob.  
It was such an awful sound, Tony thought, the choking of Peter’s tears that symbolised a loss of everything innocent about him. It was more than awful. It was heartbreaking. 

So Peter sobbed, he bawled, he cried for what felt like hours until eventually, he was so tired he fell asleep. Tony looked down at the kid in his lap, eyes puffy and red rimmed and cheeks stained, and wondered, not for the first time, but with far more urgency than he ever had, how the hell he was going to help his kid. 

Okay, Tony thought. What can I do, in this very moment? What can I do right now?  
Tony lifted Peter up, ignoring his backs stubborn argument, and carried him, all the way back through the garden, up to the house, up the stairs, and into the spare bedroom, where he lay him down and threw the covers over him. Then, he sat down in the armchair next to the bed and watched Peter for a while. He leaned over to check the time. 6:03am. Jesus. Morgan would be awake soon. 

Morgan. His second chance. He stared down at the mess of the kid on the bed in front of him. His first chance.  
Peter was his first chance, his chance he thought he’d screwed up, but now he had another go. Tony vowed, then and there, to do everything in his power to not screw it up. Not this time. He was going to help Peter Parker if it was the last thing he ever did. 

Far away, fast asleep, for once Peter was not riddled with nightmarish scenes. No, Peter, in his deep sleep, breathing lightly and rhythmically, dreamt of the stars. The stars understood. Stars weren’t scary, existential, or painful. Stars were facts. They were in the sky, every night without fail, looking down on the universe, even if they weren’t visible behind clouds. And though the universe was huge, and Peter couldn’t understand it, he felt left behind, he could always count on the stars to understand. Stars were like Tony, or May, or Pepper, or Ned, or MJ, or Rhodey, or Steve, or Happy.  
Always there. No matter what.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!  
i'm on tumblr too, come cry with me over fiction! @miss-mysticfalls


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